Participation in art might best be understood as an ethical ‘solution’ to art’s crisis of legitimation. In Freee’s view, the problem calls for a political solution in which the apparatus of art is transformed, establishing social relations for art that anticipate a world beyond bureaucratic control and market forces. In so far as prominent forms of participation in recent practice have sought to hand over various capacities and privileges of the artist to the participant, the apparatus of art has simply resulted in a new division of labour and responsibility. By contrast, our call for the transformation of art’s apparatus demands new places, new actants, new roles, and new tasks for art that are unthinkable within the current configuration of art’s apparatus. This is why the only participant worth thinking about is an impossible participant. Freee use their recent artworks to explore the problematics of particpation for art. Co-authors are: Dave Beech, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Chelsea School of Art (dave.beech@clara.co.uk)
Andy Hewitt, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, University of Wolverhampton (andy@hewittandjordan.com)
